Because we are so multi-rooted, because we are from everywhere, we are no longer really from a place. Instead, we are from beings. Saint-Exupéry noted, “We come from our childhoods as we come from a country.” But what is childhood if not the moment in which we experience some of the strongest social bonds of our lifetime? For all of our nomadic existence, our roots today are as people based as they are placed based. We belong to beings as we belong to a country.

Here’s a snippet from a recent “Brevity” blog post by Anna Vodicka that really resonated with me:

The poetry class did not make me a poet. I wrote a lot of bad poems. But it did turn my attention to the short form—the art of economy and responsibility. With Kinnell’s poem and Wrigley’s words in mind, I thought, “Yes. Prose, it is.”

I plucked a few lines from their stanzas, let them settle responsibly into the new space of a paragraph, and cautiously let prose in. That’s when I heard the sound. It went, “click.”

I am currently working on an experimental essay all about how poetry and literary translation has affected my nonfiction prose writing and pushed me in a, well, experimental direction.

Can’t wait to finish it and (hopefully) find a published home for it. Then I’ll share it here!